Liberal what?

Where's the liberal bias? Certainly not on the op-ed pages of the nation's newspapers, and certainly not in New Mexico newspapers. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Sunday that a Media Matters study showed that 60 percent of the nation's newspapers print more conservative syndicated columnists every week than progressive syndicated coumnists.

Maybe not surprising to a lot of people except for the ones who keep claiming there is a "liberal bias." This study, done in September 2007, seems to indicate otherwise.

The Albuquerque Journal's Bruce Daniels blogged about the New Mexican's reporting of the study today with a headline: "Just as You Suspected?" The study shows that the "The state's largest newspaper, the Albuquerque Journal, used conservatives 60 percent of the time and progressives only 27 percent."

Only The New Mexican and the Roswell Daily Record were evenly balanced between conservatives and progressives, according to the study.

About the Santa Fe New Mexican reporting that statistic, Daniels blogs: "That just can't be, we thought to ourselves. So we called Media Matters spokesman Karl Frisch, who told us the 60 percent conservative margin was pretty typical across the United States."

The study, "Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns" showed that the now-defunct Albuquerque Tribune (which was still alive last September) had the most even breakdown of syndicated op-ed columnists, with eight conservative, two centrist and eight progressive writers.

Daniels blogs that "The Journal had nine columnists listed as conservative (that is, if you consider Ruben Navarrette Jr. conservative -- which he certainly isn't when it comes to immigration issues), two centrists, and four progressives."

I for one can't count Navarette anything other than conservative, on any issue, but if immigration is Navarette's "progressive side" then I guess Maureen Dowd has a conservative side in some odd way too.

Here's some more little tidbits from the study:

• Only 20 percent of newspapers run more progressives than conservatives, while the remaining 20 percent are evenly balanced.



• In a given week, nationally syndicated progressive columnists are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of 125 million. Conservative columnists, on the other hand, are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of more than 152 million.



• The top 10 columnists as ranked by the number of papers in which they are carried include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.



• The top 10 columnists as ranked by the total circulation of the papers in which they are published also include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.



• In 38 states, the conservative voice is greater than the progressive voice -- in other words, conservative columns reach more readers in total than progressive columns. In only 12 states is the progressive voice greater than the conservative voice.



• In three out of the four broad regions of the country -- the West, the South, and the Midwest -- conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists. Only in the Northeast do progressives reach more readers, and only by a margin of 2 percent.



• In eight of the nine divisions into which the U.S. Census Bureau divides the country, conservative syndicated columnists reach more readers than progressive syndicated columnists in any given week. Only in the Middle Atlantic division do progressive columnists reach more readers each week.

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